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[quote=Anonymous]My 10 year old daughter is extremely sensitive to suffering in others. Which is a beautiful quality and I never want her to lose it. I just feel that sometimes she becomes so upset and so focused on another persons misery that its bordering on unhealthy for her.

For example a classmate had to rehome their dog and was very upset over it. My daughter was upset too for days and days and would constantly ask if we were going to rehome our cats. And talk about how sad her classmate must be and how sad the dog must be. She got very emotional and it just broke my heart for her. And this isn't an isolated incident. I could list dozens.

She has been distraught over everything surrounding the black lives matter movement, even though she has of course been shielded from the worst of it. She went up to a black man in Target the other day and said hello and offered him some gum. He was incredibly sweet about it and accepted the gum then she hugged him and skipped back over to me just delighted. I asked her why she did such a nice thing and she said she "didn't want him to be sad". I am proud that she is so kind and I told her that but I worry about her too. Not every stranger is going to want a gesture like that. As wonderfully as the man in Target handled it he had to wonder what the heck this little white girl was doing, right?

She cannot stand to see a living thing suffer or feel embarrassment or feel pain. She sort of takes it on herself. If she catches one of those charity commercials on with the animals or hungry children she melts down and cries about how horrible it must be to be hungry or scared and alone. Her father and I reassure her over and over. We talk to her about how there are beings in this world that need our help but we cannot take on the weight of the world. We can only do the best we can. She wants to save all of them.

A family friend has cancer and I am dreading her finding out about it. At the same time I know I need to talk her through it. She is close with this person's children.

Again it is good to have empathy and compassion. She is extremely nurturing and mothering. I feel like she gets this from me and I was also similar to her as a child but not this extreme. Her three other siblings are also sweet and caring but don't exhibit the same misery that she does when she is sad for someone else. I just feel like she is taking on too much of other peoples pain.

There are no other issues. She excels in school and thrives in her extracurricular activities. She has lots of friends and is very outgoing and [i]happy[/i] until she takes on someone elses problems as her own.

Does anyone have any advice here? Am I just being a mom here and worrying too much? Any ideas on how I can encourage her kindness but gently steer her from taking on the weight of the world?

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